


When Chess Pieces Fall

by magicandlies



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, Marauders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:27:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6811006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlies/pseuds/magicandlies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>They were all chess pieces in the end and the game was rigged from the start.</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Snape's perspective of the Marauders, Lily and the Wizarding War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The King

   

                                                                                                            

******************************************** 

 

_The King:_

_The most important and usually the weakest piece in the game_

In many ways, he and James Potter were similar.

They had the same dark hair, the same slight build and the same sharp intelligence. They both had insatiable curiosity, albeit towards different things, and the relentless drive to find answers.

They were passionate in their beliefs and were loyal to the ones they loved (and he still sometimes laughed at the irony of their loyalty).

So no one could really blame him for the nights he stayed awake just wondering how two people who were so similar could be so different. How he first wondered, and then resented the unfairness of it all until he almost went mad with it (and his hatred for James always had a distinct shade of red).

As he grew older, he began to realize that despite all their similarities, that certain je-ne-sais-quoi made all the difference in the world between him and James Potter. In the end, Potter was always the hero, surrounded by his loyal followers in all his Quidditch glory, while he was the creep everyone avoided like the plague. But none of it mattered when he had the one person that Potter wanted the most.

Until Potter took her away like he took everything else.

James Potter was the King: shiny and white, wrapped in drapes of gold and red. He was the most important piece on the board, the one whose fall would decide the outcome of the game.

 

He was also the weakest piece on the board.

 

In the end, Potter was the first to fall. His crown cracked with betrayal as he was tipped over, marking the end of an era.

Severus would have sneered at how utterly _Potter_ it was in any other situation. The King could only move one space on the board and James Potter had made it count – for better or for worse. He’d made a move that ended and started everything.

But the game didn’t end.

And it filled Severus with a terror so profound that he’d sometimes stay up at night, still and silent, not able to make a single sound while the darkness closed in around him.

 

Because if the death of the King wouldn’t end the game, what would?

 

                                                                                                       


	2. The Queen

_********************************************_

_The Queen:_

_The most powerful piece in the game, it is sometimes used to lure the opponent into a trap by Queen Sacrifice._

Lily Evans was everything a Queen should be.

Most people assume that the Queen on the chessboard is the most powerful protector. They’re not wrong. Severus just sees very little difference between protecting and attacking.

Sometimes, Lily was warm, autumn sunlight shining through patterns of red and gold. Kind, beautiful and intelligent, she saw the best in everyone and protected those she loved. She was cozy evenings with warm fireplaces and comfy quilts with cinnamon cookies and hot chocolate. She was home in a way Severus’ family never was and he wanted to give her the world. With a flower blooming in her hand and the wind shifting through her autumn hair, she made him believe he could be better. She made him hope for a better world.

Other times, Lily Evans was too warm. She scorched and burned, fiery and magnificent in ways that both terrified and thrilled him. She was the most searing shade of red with her sharp intelligence and her even sharper tongue. Her blazing fire left him with scorch marks that still hurt years after and still, he couldn’t look away. She was the most powerful person he’d ever seen and he loved her all the more for it.

When Severus saw her on the other side of the board, years since the last time he spoke to her, she stood beside her King, tall and proud with a dangerous protectiveness.

Then she had made the ultimate sacrifice that changed the tide of the game. She made a sacrifice that defended the most important piece and left the enemy line shattered in the aftermath. People called it her greatest move. They nodded their heads and said that it was the right thing to do.

 

But every year when the leaves began to change and the world was bathed in red-gold, Severus questioned if it was worth _her._

Lily Evans was the Queen, the most powerful defender and attacker on the board.

 

He sometimes hated her for it.


	3. The Knight

******************************************** 

 

_The Knight:_

_The piece with the most unconventional move, it is often used to start the game._

 

Sirius Black was the knight in shining armour to every girl’s fantasy.

With his perfect hair, storm grey eyes, aristocratic face and his careless gracefulness, he had that aura of other worldliness even when he was being purposefully crude.

Girls (and boys) fawned over him when he decided to grace them occasionally with an amused smirk like he was a gift to mankind. His brashness, his intelligence and his obvious loyalty to Potter that bordered on unhealthy obsession made him the revered prince of Hogwarts. He was the favourite of the King who could do no wrong and he burned like a bright star with his blazing sword.

He was the rebel. The brave. The unconventional who defied all expectations. He was the loyal Black who turned his back on his family for his friends and the greater good.

 

He was the very definition of a Gryffindor.

 

But through the cracks of his perfectly polished Gryffindor armour, Severus saw someone just slightly different that made even _his_ cold, Slytherin heart seize in fear and something more primal in him want to run like prey hunted by the most ruthless predator.

Because underneath all that bright Gryffindor fire ran the cold Black blood tainted with centuries of murder, lies and inbreeding.

Because no matter how far Sirius Black tried to run, no matter how much he surrounded himself with all the love and courage that Potter wrapped him in, he couldn’t escape from _himself_.

So when the light caught him in just the right angle, Sirius Black’s bright, vibrant eyes would glint, just for a moment, chilling silver. When night began the cloak him in darkness, his angelic face would look, just for a moment, like cold marble, a haughty statue of a god looking for destruction just because he _could_. And when he laughed, his carefree laughter would, just for a moment, sound off and would wake people up at night for no reason that they could remember.

Even with this knowledge, Severus had fallen for Black’s smooth, poisonous tongue for years. It had shaped Severus with hatred and self-doubt that affected his whole life more than he would like to have admitted. And on one memorable occasion, it had almost cost him his life.

He wasn’t sure why Potter was surprised that Black’s idea of a joke was not at all the kind of pranks that Potter was so fond of. After all, a Knight’s duty was to protect his King but also to kill the enemy. Sure, Severus could see Black’s appeal and could understand why Potter might have been blind to some of Black’s glaring faults; Black could be kind, beautiful and fiercely loyal – everything anyone could have wanted in a person.

Everything _Potter_ could have wanted.

What Potter never quite seemed to understand was that Black shed his identities like snakeskin – that he moulded himself to fit the role that Potter required of him. He never understood (or maybe he did but just didn’t care enough) that he always got only the best of Sirius Black and the rest – the darker, sharper parts – were hidden away and unleashed upon others.

It was in those moments that Severus would be reminded of the fact that Black was related to Bellatrix Lestrange and that they were like two sides of a coin. Perhaps if things had gone a bit differently – if Black hadn’t met Potter on the train, or if the wind blew in another direction on the day of the sorting – Sirius Black would have been fighting on the other side of the board. After all, as Black liked to say, people were shades of grey, not just black and white ( _Severus had laughed for hours at the sheer audacity of that statement_ ).

The most interesting thing, in Snape’s opinion, was that Black wouldn’t even be that vastly different from whom he was now. He would be just as cruel, loyal and unstable - like his cousin Bella.

Sirius Black was, no doubt, the brightest star. Most people didn’t get past the blinding beauty, however, to see the empty void that made up the star: the constant contrasting features that fought and condensed to implode in the end.

When it really mattered, Sirius Black was the first to make a move so detrimental to the whole game that it brought down all the pieces around him. Then he was cast to the darkest corner of the board, trapped in a place that wrought him helpless; his sword pointed to his own heart and his King’s crown binding his hands and feet like shackles. Because despite all his brilliance and eccentric ideas, a knight was the most useful when it could protect and fight from the middle of the board and the action.

 

And Sirius Black had failed on all accounts.

 


	4. The Bishop

******************************************** 

 

_The Bishop:_

_The piece that’s limited to diagonal movement and same coloured squares._

In those rare moments when Severus felt anything other than contempt towards the Marauders, he felt pity for Remus Lupin.

For the first four years in Hogwarts, Severus had felt nothing for Lupin and Pettigrew than the general annoyance and disdain for their association with Potter and Black. After all, they weren’t really important and always seemed to fade into the background as Potter and Black’s natural flamboyance often took the stage. When most people talked about the Marauders, they really meant _PotterandBlack_ and their cronies.

So Lupin was just the spineless, boring, but admittedly the less evil idiot who was friends with the wrong people. Severus didn’t like Lupin by any means but he could understand getting swept into something one didn’t quite understand and not having enough power to fight it. Severus hated Potter and Black but even a blind idiot could see the security they provided for people like Pettigrew and Lupin – and that was something he could understand as a Slytherin.

But then in his fifth year, Severus discovered that Lupin wasn’t as ordinary as he seemed. When he pressed the knot on the Whomping Willow and came face to face with a full-grown werewolf, Severus knew he was staring down into the eyes of Death and felt genuine fear for the first time. It broke something in him.

 

He could never forgive Lupin for that.

 

His new knowledge of Lupin changed everything about his opinions on the werewolf. Remus Lupin no longer seemed like a planet circling his two friends’ sun, but a significant part of the Marauders. Upon closer inspection, Severus realized that Lupin was the one who looked over all the prank details and the one who turned a blind eye to his friends’ rule breaking, first with stern eyes then with a small, fond smile that made Severus hate him more.

He was no longer the extra with no power to stop the bullies he called friends, but a weak, spineless fool that was desperate to belong. He was pathetic but his desperation and overindulgence for those who showed him even the slightest bit of kindness made him _dangerous_.

It was ironic that the recipients of his devotion didn’t seem to realize that Remus Lupin would be the last person to throw away acceptance and security.

Because for all his intelligence, Remus Lupin only chose to see one path on the board and as he turned older, he was so used to living his life on the white line that he didn’t even seem to realize that the people he was so desperate to please at first – the people he was fighting for – were all gone. It filled Severus with a vicious pleasure to see the supposedly unbreakable bond between the four friends fall apart.

Sometimes, Severus would look at the juxtaposition between Black and Lupin with a clinical kind of amusement. It was interesting to see how two people who were so different could fight for the same reasons. But he supposed that in the end, they were both starved for acceptance and were clinging on to memories of better days.

Despite all their differences, however, the Bishop fell just like all the other pieces, fighting till the end for the same road that was chosen for him. Severus wondered if Lupin could even see how far he was gone in the end.

 

But then, none of that seemed to matter when all of them fell.


	5. The Rook

 

******************************************** 

 

_The Rook:_

_Placed on the corner of the board, it is a major piece that can, in special circumstances, protect the King by castling._

 

Peter Pettigrew was unremarkable in every way.

He didn’t invoke inspiration the way Potter did. He didn’t exude intense charisma like Black, nor did he provide quiet support and intelligence like Lupin.

Even when Lupin went unnoticed by many next to Potter and Black, Severus never thought it weird that he was a Marauder. Lupin’s true nature just made Severus notice that he belonged and contributed more to the Marauders than Severus had originally thought.

But when Severus had spared a second to think about Pettigrew, he couldn’t help but wonder what the other three saw in the rat to accept Pettigrew as their own. In his youth, he had reached the conclusion that Potter just kept him around for his ego.

 

It was only much later that Severus, like everyone else, realized what being a rat really meant.

 

Because even without the extra something that all the other Marauders possessed, Pettigrew had survived Hogwarts and the war better than most people, including Severus, had.

In war, one did not necessarily need Potter’s confidence, Black’s fierceness, or Lupin’s desperate drive. All Pettigrew needed was his ability to grab onto opportunity no matter the cost.

Pettigrew was the one who was most overlooked. He was the one in the corner, solid and unwaveringly supportive of everything Potter did. Maybe his unassuming nature was why Black and Potter, at their most vulnerable, had chosen him over Lupin. But looking back on his memories now, Severus could remember how sometimes, Pettigrew would go absolutely still with the weirdest look on his face like he was analyzing his friends. How he had this intense focus one second before he became the blubbering idiot. Severus had dismissed Pettigrew’s actions as those of a cowardly idiot, but there were times when he wasn’t quite sure if luck and cowardice were all there was to Pettigrew.

Because when Sirius Black had presented his first move to Pettigrew, the rat that had seemed so useless and expendable turned out to be a major piece in the game.

Pettigrew was the Rook. He was given the role to protect the King and the Queen. He was supposed to be the piece to take the King’s place in danger.

In his darkest, most masochistic moments, Severus could sort of appreciate how remarkably well the Rook had done its job. After all, the King wasn’t the piece that Pettigrew was trying to save – it was himself.

 

Perhaps it was only Pettigrew who truly understood what War meant.


	6. Chapter 6

******************************************** 

 

_The Pawn:_

_The most expendable piece in the game; it can be promoted to any other piece when it reaches the other end of the board but since a pawn is almost always promoted to a Queen, this move is called ‘Queening’._

 

Whenever Severus thought of himself as a piece on the board (and it was more often than was healthy), he was always the pawn.

It wasn’t out of some misplaced sense of modesty. Most of the time, Severus Snape genuinely felt like an expendable piece in a game so big that he couldn’t even see when it had begun and when it would end. 

When Severus joined the Death Eaters, it was out of desperation to prove himself. To whom, he still didn’t know, but at that time, he had wanted to carve a place for himself in the world that he lived in. 

He had thought that he didn’t have anything to lose.

However, the idea of becoming a Death Eater and actually becoming one were very different. Snape soon found himself struggling every day. He was living in fear of invoking the Dark Lord’s wrath or not being good enough, because there, it had meant death if one wasn’t good enough. Most days, he was stretched so thin that he was surprised to find himself still in one piece by nightfall.

Like all the other new recruits who had sought out for power, knowledge and glory under the Dark Lord, Severus had become one of the many pawns that lined the front to be thrust into a war most of them did not even understand. He wasn’t the weird kid who got bullied by the Marauders anymore. He had become less – he had become expendable.

Then one faithful day, he had accidentally overheard The Prophecy and had known that it was the ticket to his promotion.

He had so naively thought that he, Severus Snape, would finally become something in this world.

All those years, and even now, Severus Snape blamed the Marauders for their stupidity, but deep down, he had always known that it hadn’t been Peter Pettigrew, or even Sirius Black that had made the first move.

 

It had been him.

 

His jealousy and his hatred had destroyed them all. He had condemned their fates to ones filled with death and hopelessness.

So he had waited year after year, the image of red hair spread like a halo around a pale face and a set of lifeless green eyes burned into his skull. He had waited for revenge ( _he had waited for redemption_ ).

He was no longer the boy soldier in Voldemort’s army, nor was he the scared student that had begged Dumbledore for help. When Severus Snape infiltrated the enemy line, he had become the ultimate weapon for war. He had become the most dangerous piece on the board.

In fact, he had played the game so well that no one had known for sure which side he really belonged to until the very end. None of it mattered to Severus – whether he was a Pawn or a Queen; whether he would be remembered as a hero or a villain. For Severus, there was only ever one goal. Even as people around him fell like chess pieces, reaching the endgame and checkmate, Severus had only one goal.

He failed to do his job the first time but he would make damn sure that it was done right this time.

Because he had promised when the first game had ended and he had stood on an empty chessboard filled with cracked pieces.

 

He had promised her,

 

_‘Always’._

 


	7. Chess

******************************************** 

 

_Chess:_

_A game of strategy that requires foresight and planning; the goal of the game is to take out the opposing pieces and reach a checkmate._

Severus knew that year later, if Harry Potter beat the Dark Lord and ended the war, that the war would be centered on stories of the Boy Who Lived.

 

He would never admit it aloud, but sometimes, when he sat by the window watching the world pass by in the tiny window frame, he remembered all those faces that he used to know. He remembered bumping shoulders in the hallway on the way to class, eating in the Great Hall amidst the loud chatter, and the melodrama and self-absorbed attitude that could only belong to the glorious youth that they all once were.

 

If he could go back in time, he still wouldn’t be an outgoing, likeable student. He wouldn’t stop to say hello to people and he certainly wouldn’t waste time to get to know them better. But maybe he would just stand for a minute in the middle of a bustling hallway to feel the thrumming energy of all those people who had died so young. Perhaps he could, for just a brief second, appreciate the moment for what it was – for what it had to offer.

 

It was Harry Potter and his friends that ultimately ended the Wizarding War. Students in the future would learn about Harry Potter’s miraculous survival and perhaps fleetingly mention his parents’ sacrifice. To them, they wouldn’t be anything more than a couple of names in a history book.

 

Perhaps years later, this new generation would learn about Sirius Black, a wrongfully convicted man who was the first to escape Azkaban. Or Remus Lupin: the first werewolf to get an Order of Merlin.

Perhaps somewhere in the textbook, it would mention his name: the double agent who held the shortest term as Headmaster of Hogwarts.

 

But in the end, their stories would all be centered around Harry Potter and his two friends who fought bravely at such a young age to end the war.

 

It seemed unfair.

 

It may have been Harry’s generation that ended the war but it was _their_ generation that lived through a lifetime of war.

 

To some, these names weren’t just black ink on paper with references to Harry Potter as footnotes. They were the Marauders, who were once Kings and Pranksters of Hogwarts, and whom Severus hated with a passion. She was Lily Evans, a girl who was purely herself before she was ever a Potter. She made filthy jokes in front of her sister, could swear like Peeves and was everything to Severus’ short life.

 

Then there were countless others, who had cheered for their Houses in Quidditch games and looked like trolls right before OWLs. They had dreams and hopes and a future to look forward to.

 

But instead, they lived with rising fear in the First Wizarding War, woke up every night drenched in sweat with nightmares for fourteen years before their nightmares came true in the form of the Second Wizarding War.

 

They lost so much to gain so little. They were sacrificed for their children’s generation.

 

In the end, they were all just chess pieces in someone else’s game: old, cracked, used and broken, but still standing.

 

 

******************************************** 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a piece that's been floating in my head for a long time because I like to write all the emotional clichés. This took much longer than I thought it would and it looked so short when I posted all of it. It renewed my respect for all the writers. I took some chess info from wikipedia and of course, the world of HP belongs to JK Rowling. Remember to leave kudos and comments on your way out if you enjoyed it!


End file.
